Eastwood's rambling RNC speech

TAMPA, Fla. — Clint Eastwood delivered a rambling performance at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night in a speech that included the Hollywood legend speaking to an empty stool and telling an imaginary President Barack Obama “I’m not going to shut up” and calling the president “absolutely crazy.”

The Romney campaign defended Eastwood’s performance, saying, “His ad-libbing was a break from all the political speeches and the crowd enjoyed it.”

Eastwood, who was unveiled earlier in the day as the mystery speaker before Sen. Marco Rubio’s introduction of Mitt Romney’s nomination acceptance speech, stepped onto the stage at the convention center and criticized Obama’s policies while barely mentioning the GOP presidential nominee.

“So I’ve got Mr. Obama sitting here and I just was going to ask him a couple of questions. But you know, I remember 3½ years ago when Mr. Obama won the election and, no, I wasn’t a big supporter,” Eastwood said as he looked at the empty stool next to his podium.

“I was watching that night when he was having that thing and they were talking about hope and change,” he added. “‘Yes we can’ and it was dark and outdoors and it was nice, people were lighting candles, they were saying ‘I just thought this is great.’ Everybody’s crying, Oprah was crying. And I was even crying.”

“I haven’t cried that hard since I found out that there’s 23 million unemployed people in this country. Now that is something to cry for because that is a disgrace, a national disgrace, and we haven’t done enough; obviously, this administration hasn’t done enough to cure that,” he said.

The actor, who officially endorsed Romney earlier this month, continued on a winding rant in which he hit the president for failing to keep his promises.

“Somebody had the stupid idea of trying terrorists in downtown New York City. … I know you were against the war in Iraq and that’s OK, but you thought the war in Afghanistan was OK. You thought that was something worth doing. We didn’t check with the Russians to see how they did there for the 10 years,” Eastwood said.

“I’m not going to shut up. It’s my turn,” the actor blurted out a few moments later, still glancing over at the make-believe Obama sitting in the empty chair next to him. “I just wondered, all these promises, and then I wondered about you know, … what do you want me to tell Romney? I can’t tell him that. … Tell him yourself. You’re absolutely crazy.”

Eastwood seemed to thrill the audience with his celebrity and swagger, drawing cheers and chortles — even if some of the laughter seemed of the nervous variety, of the sort one gives an elderly uncle at the Thanksgiving table in the middle of a story that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

“I just don’t like to see people make fun of somebody like that — no matter who it is,” said Tom Fortiwiecz from Cleveland. “It was too much.”

The speech could certainly prove a distraction from Romney’s speech as clips from the convention are replayed over and over again on the morning TV news. During and well after the actor’s speech Thursday night, reporters were busy tweeting out animated reactions to Eastwood’s performance.

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CORRECTION: Corrected by: Vivyan Tran @ 08/30/2012 11:52 PM
Correction: The original version of this story was corrected to state that Clint Eastwood did not tell President Barack Obama to “shut up,” but instead said that he would not be “shut up” from expressing his own political views.